Judge won't dismiss murder charge because evidence was mistakenly sent to auction house

ROCHESTER, N.Y. – A federal judge says he won't dismiss a murder charge in New York case even though some evidence was mistakenly shipped to an auction house and lost.

In his recent ruling, Magistrate Judge Jonathan Feldman decided there was no "bad faith" on the part of police.

The ruling came in the case against four Rochester residents charged in the 1998 drug-related killing of Francisco Santos.

During an April hearing, an Erie County property clerk said that in 2002 he mistakenly sent a box of evidence from the open case to an auction house, which regularly took in items from police storage that weren't needed anymore. The evidence included a broken knife blade and broken shovel.

Defense and prosecution attorneys differ on whether the evidence was valuable to the case.